A confluence of factors has made travel to the continent in the next six months or so as cheap as it has been in about 30 years. There's time for a pre-Christmas shopping trip — or one last business trip to schmooze a prospect. Or fly over in January and catch the continent's highly anticipated "winter sales." Maybe hit some shows in London or an opera in Milan. Perhaps visit a few Michelin-starred dining palaces in Paris. Consider starting 2017 right with an early sales trip.

Or do them all. It's that cheap. The travel powers that be are literally giving it away.

It's not just flights and rooms, either. With the euro plunging to $1.07 against the U.S. dollar and the British pound down to $1.25, everything in Europe is cheaper: restaurant meals, museum admissions, theatrical and musical events. And, of course, the shopping, especially when the designated sale periods start right after the New Year. I mentioned these bargains in Seat 2B a few months ago, but, if anything, the deals are improving because the dollar is almighty again.

This build-up is partially in response to a rapid expansion by a traditional European discounter, Icelandair, and two aggressive newcomers, Norwegian Air Shuttle and WOW, another Iceland-based carrier. Icelandair and WOW direct their Europe-bound flyers via Keflavik Airport in Reykjavík, but Norwegian flies nonstop to the continent from cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, Boston, New York and Fort Lauderdale.

In years past, airlines would have dropped transatlantic flights when both Americans and Europeans were reluctant to fly. And some routes have been cut, especially to secondary British destinations, Belgium, Italy and Turkey. But jet fuel is cheap — the government says carriers paid $1.47 a gallon in September, less than half the 2013 price — so airlines can discount lustily in coach. As long as premium classes remain relatively full (and business travel to and from Europe has been strong), airlines can cut coach fares without risking profit.

Europe's hotel industry is slashing prices because it is getting hit with the double whammy of terrorism and the growth of alternate lodging sites such as Airbnb.com and HomeAway.com.

France, Belgium and Turkey — all victims of terrorist attacks in the last year — have been forced to ratchet up discounts because visitors have stopped coming. In France, tourism is down 8 percent since January. It may be down twice as much in Brussels and visitors have turned away from Turkey, partially due to terrorism and partially due to a brutal post-coup crackdown by Tayyip Erdogan, the country's autocratic president.

Terrorism fears aside, however, Europe in the next few months should be paradise for U.S. travelers. Sure the weather will be chilly (around the Mediterranean) or dank (Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland) or downright cold and snowy (Scandinavia and Eastern Europe), but a strong dollar is a remarkably bracing pick-me-up.

And having recently returned from a quick trip to Rome, trust me when I tell you that pitching a client over a 16-euro plate of spaghetti cacio e pepe with zucchini flowers at Antico Arco on the Janiculum Hill is much more succulent when it converts to $17 instead of the $25 it cost just a few years ago.